Cyber Security Statistics 2024: Costs, Vectors, and the Spending Boom

A data-driven snapshot of cyber risk

In the Cyber Security sector, Cyber security statistics in 2024 underscore a familiar but intensifying reality: breaches are more expensive and more frequent, and they take months to detect and contain. The global average cost of a breach climbed again this year, with healthcare remaining the most expensive sector to remediate, according to recent research from IBM’s annual benchmark Cost of a Data Breach report. The persistent rise reflects a mix of factors, from sprawling cloud estates to identity sprawl and an expanding attack surface.

Law enforcement tallies echo the commercial data. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center logged more than 880,000 complaints and double-digit billions in reported losses in 2023—driven by investment scams, business email compromise, and ransomware—per the latest IC3 annual report. While reported figures capture only a fraction of actual damage, they are a directional indicator of where attackers are concentrating their efforts and where organizations remain vulnerable.

For boards and budget owners, the through line is clear: the statistical trendlines point to longer business disruption, higher recovery costs, and greater regulatory exposure when incidents strike. That reality is forcing sharper focus on measurable outcomes such as reducing dwell time, cutting the blast radius of compromised identities, and accelerating recovery through tested playbooks.

How attackers are getting in: vectors and targets by the numbers

Statistics on top attack vectors show that people and credentials remain front and center. Social engineering, phishing, and abuse of stolen credentials collectively underpin the majority of successful intrusions, as detailed in Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report. Misconfigurations and exposed cloud assets also feature prominently as organizations move more data and workloads into distributed environments.

Ransomware continues to loom large, frequently arriving via credential theft or phishing before pivoting laterally to encrypt key systems. Supply-chain and third-party compromises—amplified by ubiquitous software components and managed service dependencies—are also notable contributors, with outsized downstream impact when widely deployed tools are affected. The statistics point to a world where even “ordinary” phishing can become the first domino in multi-stage, multi-party incidents.